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California Preserved Prunes

A preserved prune recipe using prunes, sugar, and water, cooked slowly and sweetened to make a syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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California Preserved Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes and place them in a granite pan.

  2. Cover the prunes with enough water.

  3. Cook over a slow fire until the fruit is tender.

  4. Remove the prunes and pass them through a sieve.

Make the preserve

  1. For each pound of pulp, add ¾ pound of sugar.

  2. Make a syrup with the sugar and a little water, then add the pulp.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Seal the mixture.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Prunes
Their pulp gives the preserve its body and concentrated dried-fruit flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the pulp and, at high concentration, helps preserve it by binding water.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes. The sugar syrup and pulp must reach a thick, high-sugar concentration to keep the preserve stable. Boiling long enough drives off excess water, so the mixture neither stays runny nor spoils.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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